These Fishes in the Sea
by Melfice
Summary: "How do you know you're real?" Sixteen asks him. "What if you are just a corrupted memory, lost in a data stream that someone else is accessing?" SLASH. Ezio/Desmond, Subject 16/Desmond, Altair/Malik.


**Notes:** Written for the AC kink meme. Like Desmond, this fic is kind of batshit.

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><p><strong>These Fishes in the Sea<strong>

The world is a vice closing in around him and it is the only thing he knows. It is a pressure all around him, like walls shrinking in on themselves, and it makes everything else seem distant and unreachable; Rebecca and Shaun's voices are distant, a reminder of where – who – he is, but their voices are faint and they get easily lost in the static that is Desmond's mind.

Ezio is easy to become trapped within, easy to lose time in, through missions and assassinations as though they are one. When he stops being able to wake up, when it becomes impossible to open his eyes and step out of the Animus, it becomes harder and harder to distinguish himself from Ezio. There are times when he can't tell which are his memories and which are Ezio's. It starts as something completely underneath their control, and it transforms into something that takes its hold on him and _won't let him go_.

He has felt this way before. He has gone through these motions before. The first time he had stepped into the Animus, the first time he had looked through Altair's eyes, the confusion and difficulty in separating their lives had been immediate. This feels the same, but he doesn't have an end to help him focus on what is his own life; he can't wake up, can't get out of this dream world, and everything is starting to blend together.

The descent into Altair had been slow, like a dead weight sinking underwater. It had been subtle and controllable and he had never been worried about impossible things happening. He had never had to worry about the impossibility of a memory – of data and numbers and _nothing – _taking notice of him. There should be nothing that gives him away, nothing that is any different, but there is something unfamiliar underneath his skin and bones that Ezio is starting to notice.

Malik had not noticed – had wrapped himself so wholly around a single person and still had not even seen so much as a glimpse of Desmond. Malik had loved a memory, one that could do nothing but accept, and it had all been in the programming; it is nothing but data. He is a memory that plays out like a recording, over and over again until Desmond forces Altair to do the right things, to put him in the right place so that he will say the right thing.

The Animus is strange though, and it warps memories into something real enough that Desmond feels as though he can reach out and touch them. It burns like something that should remain hidden, like something that should have never been discovered, and it burns, and burns, and burns. The truth is there, just out of Malik's reach – just beyond what he is capable of seeing – and he may recognize that there is something different about Altair, but he cannot voice his concerns; he is only data, only programming from a memory that is _just so_ and cannot change. The Animus is intricate, is a mess of numbers that are impossible to decipher, and Malik may have sensed something was wrong – maybe have sensed something amiss – but there had never been enough to grab hold of.

Ezio is just a memory, but he does not listen to the Animus' programming. He takes the memory apart piece by piece and, when it lays out before him, he sees a glimpse of something that shouldn't have been able to be seen. Ezio had seen a piece of _Desmond_ that shouldn't have been seen and it had caused turmoil – had caused a rift – in the system that had never truly repaired. Him knowing is worse than the burn, worse than anything else, and it is inescapable.

Ezio is learning. He notices that there is something amiss, that there is something there that doesn't belong, and it's been this way since the first time he heard the name 'Desmond.' It is terrifying. They shouldn't know that Desmond is there, they are _memories_, and they shouldn't-

They're not real.

"How do you know you're real?" Sixteen asks him. He sits on a rock and watches Desmond pace like a cat might watch a mouse. His lips are curled into a smirk that makes Desmond feel uneasy, makes him feel his skin crawl, but he can't really explain why. "What if you are just a corrupted memory, lost in a data stream that someone else is accessing?"

"Because it _feels_ real," Desmond snaps, but even he's not sure. He's starting to forget what 'real' feels like at all. The sand underneath his feet feels real, the wind in his hair feels very real; Sixteen watches him, blinks normally, breathes, and he _is not real_.

Before everything changed – when he could still wake up, when he wasn't trapped within his own mind – he had trained, had eaten, and he had slept. He had slept and his dreams had been bizarre, had been memories in their own rights, and sometimes they had been frighteningly real. He doesn't dream now – not really – but sometimes he enters the gateway, enters the blue static into Ezio's memories, and hovers somewhere between memories and awake that is as close to dreams as he gets now.

Once, when he steps through it, he opens his eyes to white and blue wisps of smoke – to the crackle of static – and knows he is in between a memory and his own self. He opens his eyes to fog, to the insides of the Animus, and he lays on his back and stares at the data that materializes around him. Ezio is kneeling over him, fingers experimentally touching the front of his shirt – as though curious, as though seeking knowledge – and everything freezes when Desmond's breath catches in his throat in surprise. Ezio's eyes snap to him, barely visible beneath the hood, and his hand flattens against Desmond's chest, wrist flattens against his chest – the opening of his hidden blade cool through the thin fabric of his shirt.

Ezio stares at him like he's something that he hasn't quite figured out yet. His head is tilted to one side, expression thoughtful and calm, and Desmond can't breathe. He doesn't breathe, doesn't move, just watches and waits and tells himself that it isn't real. It's a dream, or a hallucination, but it isn't real because _Ezio isn't real_. He's dead, a hundred years dead. He's just a memory, just a name – but the weight of his hand, the warmth of his palm, the dig of his bracer into Desmond's chest, are all scarily real.

Ezio's other hands moves to Desmond's face, the pad of his thumb moving lightly across the scar on Desmond's lip, and his eyes narrow; suspicious. He leans forward, voice low, the rough sound of it tightening all the nerves in Desmond's body – but it is in Italian, and Desmond catches bits and pieces but not _enough_.

Then he's staring at the a fake blue sky, the sound of the ocean in his ears and the feel of sand beneath him. He is slick with sweat and shaking, and Sixteen is laughing.

It starts to happen every time now, when he enters the gateway and goes into memories, that Ezio is startlingly aware that something in his subconscious is different. It's a feeling that traces along Desmond's spine, cold like a chill and tense like he's being held. Ezio relives the memories like he should be, like the Animus is working like it is supposed to; Ezio is just a _memory_. Sometimes it feels like Desmond loses control, like he's holding on for his life and Ezio is dragging him down into recklessness.

Sometimes Ezio desynchronizes them, veers off the memory like he has a mind of his own, and it's like a screaming, white light erupts into Desmond's mind; it happens whenever Ezio says his name, whenever he looks into a mirror and starts looking for something he shouldn't be able to know is lurking beneath the surface. It ends with him thrown from the memory, onto a sandy beach with Sixteen's knowing grins and sharp tongue, and there is no one to tell him to take it easy, no one to warn him that he is pushing himself too hard.

His legs are shaky when he stands, his head pounding, and he makes it several feet towards the gateway when he collapses. The body he falls against is familiar, two strong arms holding him up. He smells leather and gunpowder, feels the brush of a short beard against his forehead, but when his eyes snap open it is Sixteen he is laying propped up against.

"Are your 'friends' even trying to wake you up?" Sixteen wonders, and he should not feel real, should not be a warm weight against Desmond's side. "I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you."

Sixteen tells him that things will get worse before they get better – that his madness is expansive and growing, will grow until it caves in on itself and takes him with it. Everything Sixteen says is confusing and depressing and it makes Desmond desperate to wake up, but he can't.

If Desmond is honest with himself, there is a part of him that is anticipating the moment when Ezio sees him – truly sees him – and it terrifies him. He stands on his own two feet and stares into the gateway, feels short of breath and lost, and everything is so much static in his head.

Sixteen grins, a little madly, and runs his tongue along his top teeth. "No one blames you for being lonely, Desmond. Not your ancestors, not your friends, not me."

"None of this is real – you're not real," Desmond tells him, because he's been repeating the same mantra in his head over and over and over, but it's difficult to believe it when he can't wake up.

Sixteen clucks his tongue against the roof of his mouth and shrugs loosely. "Feels real, doesn't it?"

"You're not real," Desmond repeats, and he thinks if this were a child's story then saying those words should make Sixteen vanish in a puff of smoke. It should make it impossible for him to exist.

The hands on his elbows are cold and rough, but they feel very real.

"I was real. I was a pawn just like you, Desmond. I was a pawn and it wasn't enough to just cast my piece off the board," Sixteen says, and he's still grinning madly, even though his grip is tight and his words are shaky. "They cast me off the board, off the table, onto the floor to be forgotten – and you're going to feel just how real that is."

Then the grip on his arms pushes him, roughly backwards, and he's stumbling – through sand, through a haze of light and blue, and then there is darkness and nothing, and nothing.

It has become a challenge to differentiate what is Ezio and what is not. It has become harder to tell which is Desmond and which is Ezio – which is Altair and which is Desmond. It is harder to decide what is a memory and what is a mistake, what has been forgotten, but he knows – knows with certainty – that something has glitched within the Animus.

When Desmond falls through the gateway, he falls into Ezio's world – into his memories – and Ezio takes him somewhere that isn't a memory at all. Desmond clings to his mantra, tells himself that he has to keep his sanity clutched tightly in both hands before he gets lost in this forever, but it is difficult when Ezio stares into a dusty mirror in the assassin's hideout and Desmond stares back at him. Desmond sees his own, scruffy, modern appearance in the reflection – and he can't see Ezio's expression, because he cannot see Ezio -

Gloved fingers rise up and press against the glass, against Desmond's bare fingers in his reflection – and it should feel like cold glass underneath his fingers, not leather – not like someone else' shands-

"Desmond," Ezio says, and Desmond hears the rough drag of it as though it were in his own ears, feels the chills it sends down his spine, and he shouldn't be able to feel that either. "Who are you, I wonder?"

It's insane to think he can manipulate these events – these events that are not even memories, have never happened, should not be visible to him right now because he's in the _animus_ – but he tries regardless. Desmond steps towards the mirror, forces Ezio's boot-clad feet closer to the mirror, until he feels the brush of stubble against his face, the hard press of leather against his knees. He pushes until there are gloved fingers against his face, warm breath against his open mouth, and he pushes until he slips through glass and memory and into warmth and arms-

Until there is sand all around him, the sound of a shore nearby, and Sixteen is staring up at him, pinned underneath him by his mouth, with wide, indecipherable eyes. He is warm and pliant and he yields – and this isn't a memory, isn't real, but it feels like something tangible. The ground is shaking, the sky falling down on them, and Sixteen grins madly into his mouth and-

Desmond wakes up in a van, in the middle of nowhere, and nothing feels real anymore.


End file.
